C64 Keyboard Connector to DB-25 Female Connector
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Here, you can find the connection schema for C128D like keyboard. This
keyboard is used in my tower-64 together with an AT-keyboard. So, you
need this information if you want to have a seperate compatible C64
keyboard.
Separate C64 keyboard can be consist of three parts:
1. C64 to DB-25(female) cable
2. 25 pin male switch-box cable (found in market)
3. Keyboard to DB-25(female) cable
For the first part, you can use the keyboard's own cable with its
connector, since it's hard to find those connectors. Simply desolder the
wires from the keyboard and solder them to the DB-25 connector as
described below.
For the third part, you need a 20 line strip cable (actually you only
need 18 line but 20 is a standard, and since I'm not a native speaker of
this language, I don't know the correct term for this cable, sorry). This
cable must be soldered inbetween keyboard and the second DB-25 connector.
There are color codes in original C64 keyboard cables, this may help you
for not being confused in wiring. If you follow the schema below, you can
end up with a C128D compatible keyboard (without C128 specific keys of
course).
Here is the wiring:
C64 MotherBoard Keyboard
keyboard pins meaning DB-25 Label Cable Color
--------------- ------- ----- -------- -----------
1 gnd 1 I white
2 not connected 2
3 restore 3 8 black
4 not connected 4
5 r3 5 7 grey
6 r6 6 6 purple
7 r5 7 5 blue
8 r4 8 4 green
9 r7 9 3 yellow
10 r2 10 2 orange
11 r1 11 1 red
12 r0 12 0 brown
13 c0 13 H grey-white
14 c6 14 G purple-white
15 c5 15 F blue-white
16 c4 16 E green-white
17 c3 17 D yellow-white
18 c2 18 C orange-white
19 c1 19 B red-white
20 c7 20 A brown-white
As it's seen above, there is one-to-one connection from pins to DB-25
By the way, to make a keyboard, I cut the C64 case and mounted the
connector to the one of the sides. Then I connected this keyboard to the
C64-tower with a 3 meters data-switch-box cable. And it works fine.
Ilker Ficicilar
filker@newton.physics.metu.edu.tr
c068214@orca.cc.metu.edu.tr
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